A Hectic Couple of Weeks

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Some good, some bad. But crazy, nonetheless.

About two weeks ago, I went to the FMA annual meeting in Dallas (it was great, by the way). I managed to connect with a lot of old friends, and also made a few new ones.

While I was there, I started a couple of new projects. Without going into too much detail, I think I've figured out a very creative way to use a data set in a new way. Just before FMA, I started a paper with a couple of grad school classmates that uses this data. While doing it, I realized a slew of different applications for the data and methodology.

In short, it's data that's typically used by researchers in one sub-field of finance, but I think it can be used to answer a number of corporate finance research questions. The data's pretty ugly, so it took a while to get it under control. But now that I've got a handle on it, I have more ideas to use it for than I have time to implement. So, I was looking for coauthors who could help out. Luckily, I have a lot of friends, so there were people willing to listen to the idea(s). As a result, I now have three new projects. They may be garbage and I might be totally deluded that this is a good idea, but I don't think so (or at least, I hope not).

Once I got back, I bought a "new" (to me) used car, taught in our evening MBA program one night and then twice in a neighboring city in a professional program, and had two family health problems.

Unknown Son had his surgical port removed (now that he's done with chemo, he no longer needs it, and it is a risk for infection). Unfortunately, what should have been a fairly straightforward half-day affair ended up with him staying overnight at the hospital due to some complications (he's fine now, by the way). Then, the next day Unknown Daughter came down with an intestinal bug that resulted in output from both ends.

Ah well - parenthood involves a lot of bodily fluids, I guess.

In any event, I'm now giving an exam to my evening MBA class. Hey - I have to kill the 2 1/2 hours sometime, eh?